(NOTE FROM BRAD: Catching up on a few items as time allows. Still mostly "off the grid" for the next several days, but jumping in when I can.)

You may recall the recent decertification of E-Voting machines made by the UniLect corporation in several Pennsylvania counties. That occured as a result of one good American citizen, Sheila Green, demanding an investigation into the Direct Electronic Response (DRE) voting machines in the state (oh, okay...Commonwealth) of Pennsylvania. The effort cost her just $450 and resulted in the decertification of PA's $1.2 million UniLect touch-screen voting machines.

The machines were decertified after the investigation, according to the Sec. of the Commonwealth's statement, because...

the System failed to sense screen touches multiple times and did not register nor record votes. The screen also "froze" and stopped accepting touches during the reexamination. The Department believes these malfunctions help explain why there were more than 10,000 instances where a vote was not counted in the three counties during the 2004 general election.

UniLect was generously allowed a chance to meet with the Department again to answer to the concerns revealed by the investigation. And now, after meeting with them, it looks like UniLect failed to meet the concerns according to a Press Release issued yesterday:

HARRISBURG, Pa., April 29 /PRNewswire/ --- Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortes today issued the following statement regarding the decertification of the UniLect Patriot Direct Recording Electronic Voting System and its subsequent reexamination.

"As a result of a second reexamination of the UniLect Patriot Direct Recording Electronic Voting System, the decertification of the system that was issued on April 7, 2005 will remain in effect. In consideration of the upcoming Municipal Primary on May 17 and the interests of several parties, it was important for me to relay this decision quickly, so the Department of State can continue its work with Beaver, Greene and Mercer counties putting alternatives in place to ensure an accurate primary election. We remain committed to strong communication with the County Commissioners, and the voters in their counties so that no citizen is denied the right or opportunity to vote."

I'm still in the dark about plans for this week's RAW RADIO ...
I know you are too, and some of you will be wondering ...
Hang tough, folks: I will post the schedule here as soon as I get it!

As Brad likes to say: "Developing..."

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Try as I might, I was unable to get up a new live broadcast from where I currently am this week on the road! The BRAD SHOW On the Air will return LIVE again next week from our previous On-the-Road location for one last broadcast before high-tailing it home to our (hopefully) permanent homebase broadcast center!

So, this week's BRAD SHOW will be a "Best Of..." --- yes, we've been at it for all of two weeks and already broadcasting a "Best Of..." For the record, the radio gig came upon us quickly while we were on the road, and knew that we had previous obligations for this weekend which might make it difficult or impossible to get a LIVE show up and on the air. We did our best to make it happen, but just couldn't pull it off. However, if you missed any of these great hours, they will be new to you!

Attempting to update BradShow.com right now --- where you can get to "LISTEN LIVE" links for tonight's show, but even having trouble doing that from our super-secret, on-the-road, undisclosed location! Thanks WP for keeping things up-to-date here in our "absence". Hopefully things will get easier again in a couple of weeks!

An open invitation to share your thoughts regarding David Ray Griffin's lecture, C-SPAN's coverage, the events of 9/11 themselves, the many "conspiracy theories" which have been advanced to try to explain those events, the gaping holes in the "official conspiracy theory", and/or the fact that only now --- more than three and a half years after the attacks --- is it even partially acceptable to ask serious questions about any of this on American television ...

And speaking of the "official conspiracy theory", I've recently read an article which does a great job of debunking it, and you can find a few more remarks about it, plus a link, on this page of please don't read my blog.

QUICK UPDATE: My apologies: I accidentally referred you to a piece on my blog which had a broken link. [The page I had linked to has been taken down.] I found another copy of the same essay and fixed the link in my blog page, so I invite you to try it again: or, to go straight to the essay "Debunking Conspiracy Theorists" by Gerard Holmgren, click here.

This has been in the breeze for a while now. There was supposedly a prior date set for it but the broadcast was allegedly cancelled. Or postponed. Or something. Can't quite grab it by the tail ...

But in any event ... the video of Griffin's Madison lecture (which was said to be excellent) might be broadcast on CSPAN2 (the book channel), Saturday morning at 10:30. Eastern time, local time, I don't know. I wish I could tell you but I can't. Check your listings. Post your listings. My research skills seem to be on vacation and I'm in a hurry [again!] but I invite you to post whatever you've got pertaining to the lecture and the broadcast, here on this thread.

PLUS! Unconfirmed reports from trusted sources indicate that the Josh Mittledorf piece "View from Another Planet", which ran at the Free Press a couple of weeks ago, may have been published by the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is important because Mittledorf wrote about Clint Curtis:

I heard Clint Curtis talk about working in 2001 as a programmer for Yang Enterprises in Florida. He was assigned, one day, to a meeting with State Senate Speaker Tom Feeney, who asked to have a program written into the software that controls voting machines so that the totals could be manipulated without leaving a trace. Curtis, the whistleblower, is now unemployed. Feeney, the politician, is now the U.S. Representative from Florida's 24th Congressional district.

Koehler is editor and columnist for Tribune Media Services where he published his article for any of the Tribune Media's clients to pick up and run in their papers. Few, apparently, did.

Chicago Tribune itself did not run his article, but has apparently found it fitting today to run a column which attempts to debunk his column! Without even the courtesy of running it first! (Bob's words were "debunk", we would suggest "attack" is the more appropriate description!)

Take a look at the column today by Tribune Public Editor, Don Wycliff. Be astounded or appalled. Your choice. Either way, you may wish to help educate Mr. Wycliff politely so he doesn't make quite as much of an ass out of himself in future columns.

We're still on the roll ourselves, as we will continue to be for several days at least, so virtually no time for a detailed rebuttal here. I'll leave that to you BRAD BLOGGERS instead. Though, in truth, with Wycliff pointing towards Richard Nixon (yes, Richard Nixon!) for moral guidance on the matter of how to appropriately deal with Elections in America, does one really need to say much about the crediblity of this Wycliff fellow?

Must hit the road shortly, so just a quick link to the work of blogger Nick Lewis who has been doing some interesting investigation into some odd CNN-related occurrences on a number of well-known blogs, including The BRAD BLOG. We've been quietly keeping our eye on this story for a number of days as Lewis' work pans out and as he looks into what might be a bit of strange Guerrilla Marketing being done by CNN on blogs such as this one.

More on this strange story as time allows in the coming days, but we're glad to see more and more "Investigative Bloggers" showing up to do the job of the guys who actually get paid for it! Thank you, Nick!

Several long-planned obligations and super-secret missions dictate that we will be in and out over the next week or more. It's unclear how much we will be able to post here during that period. Hopefully plenty, but we don't know for sure. Our stalwart crew of guest bloggers (led as usual by the intrepid Winter Patriot) will be on call to fill any notable gaps in my availability during the coming days with Open Threads and/or enlightening news items of note. Thanks both for your understanding and your continuing tireless support!

The mighty Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press --- responsible for boatloads of tremendous investigative reporting on the ground from Ohio in Election 2004 and one of the participants in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit seeking to set aside the election results in the Buckeye State --- has been mostly quiet of late while working on an upcoming book on all of the above to be published soon.

Today, however, it looks like he's unleashed quite a bit of what he hasn't been able to report on over the last several weeks while hard at work writing the historical record. His new article on the "rise of the right wing juggernaut in Ohio" sheds fresh light on several key points on the insidious Election Night machinations, and even those to this day, of Ohio's Election Viceroy, Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (also the Co-Chair of Ohio's Committee to Re-Elect Bush/Cheney '04).

Amongst the several noteworthy new items Fitrakis catches up on today is some inside skinny on the now-infamous Warren County lockdown on Election Night when an apparently phony "Homeland Security Alert" led Board of Elections officials to issue an unprecedented scheme that shut out all press and witnesses from late-night vote counting in the county's election center.

Free Press has received an insider's account of what happened that night. Here's a sample:

With the media and independent election observers "walled off," as the Cincinnati Enquirer described, the employee claims that "some ballot boxes were taken to the holding area" where they were not monitored by election officials. The Warren County employee referred to the person supervising the unauthorized warehouse as a "Republican Party hack."

The employee is concerned that it would have been easy to "stuff" the ballot boxes or that "signatures could have been forged in the unauthorized holding area."

The anonymous employee told the Free Press that testimony would be provided if subpoenaed. A list of questions that remain unanswered in Warren County was also supplied: Which precinct ballot boxes were taken to the unauthorized holding area? Were officials from the Board of Elections present in the holding area? When were the ballots taken from the holding area to the check-in tent that was erected temporarily to count ballots? If Warren County was under a state of emergency, then why weren't any metal detectors engaged? The FBI has denied that there was any homeland security threat on Election Day.

As well, in a section of the article sub-headed as "Whitewash with a black face", Fitrakis connects a few more interesting dots on the phony GOP front-group busy conning America and hoping to derail true Electoral Reform. Fitrakis ties together the "non-partisan" hoaxsters of the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR) --- the group we originally exposed several weeks ago exclusively here --- with some of the other folks who testified recently at Rep. Bob Ney's hastily convened U.S. House Administrative Hearings on Electoral problems in OH...

Disturbingly apropos of our previous piece on the wankers of the Mainstream Media and their disservice to America...Our friends at FreePress.net have unleashed the following video on the Big Media Boyz who call the shots. For your online viewing displeasure...

(By the way, the Free Press is organizing the big National Media Reform Conference in St. Louis a couple of weeks from now. Somehow, they seem to have managed to get some great big names, but not a single blogger! Hello? We like 'em, so be nice, but think that they should have at least one at the conference! Don't you? Being the media whore that I must obviously be, I'd be delighted to speak at the conference if they'll have me. But you may have to apply some POLITE pressure asking them to do so! You can email them at conference@freepress.net. Feel free to request any blogger if you prefer that they hear from someone else. Either way, the voice of the new media should be better represented at anything calling itself a "National Media Reform Conference" in 2005! Dontcha think?)

Juan Cole gets it right in his highly recommend piece today pointing out exactly why and how the MSM's required 15% profit margin has killed the entire industry and is bringing the rest of the country down with it. It's America (and the rest of the world!) which suffers from the corporate media delinquency, of course, as profit has replaced the public service that once was "the news".

Back in the day, news was always a loss-leader. It wasn't meant to make money, but to perform a public service. Back in the day, while CBS lost money with their extraordinary news gathering operation, Bill Paley was proud of that jewel in the "tiffany network's" crown. In America 2005, however, losing money for the good of the nation will not be tolerated. And those of us who understand that it's about issues and public safety and governmental responsible will be branded as America Haters in the process.

And this difference, my friends, accounts for why bloggers get vilified. Journalists can be switched to another story, or fired, or their stories can be buried on page 36. We can't be fired. So if Martin Peretz doesn't like what we have to say, he will publish a hatchet job on us in The New Republic, seeking to make us taboo. If you can't shut people up, and you really don't want their voices heard, then all you can do is try to persuade others not to listen to them or give them a platform. The easiest way to do this is to falsely accuse them of racism or Communism some other character flaw unacceptable to polite society. Because of the distributed character of blogging "computing," however, such tactics are probably doomed to fail.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"- Mahatma Gandhi

If this Sunday article from Washington Post is any indication, it seems we're now somewhere between that "laugh at you" phase and that "fight you" phase. Which I choose to see as continuing good news...since we're heading straight towards that "then you win" phase in the bargain.

The piece headlined "Vote Fraud Theorists Battle Over Plausibility" from WaPo's Terry M. Neal is, at least, a step in the right direction. The issues are finally being discussed on no matter which page in the mainstreamest of the Mainstream Media.

With that, however, comes the usual expected imbalance in the bargain. The WaPo article discusses the recent scientific report from U.S. Count Votes which debunks the notion that the Exit Polls were wrong (as Bush Supporters, Republicans, and even the Exit Polling company would like you to believe) by explaining that the odds are several millions to one that the Exit Polls could say one thing in virtually all of the swing states, only to wildly change --- and in only one direction, Bush's --- at the last minute to give Bush a "victory" in the final Voting Results.

In covering the report --- as we've come to expect whenever such issues are discussed at all in the mainstream --- Neal is skeptical and as well, quotes two other skeptics. They only bother to quote one supporter of the study, one of the authors themselves.

One of the great misconceptions (generously) or misdirections (more probably) that the piece offers is Neal's notion that...

it strains credulity to think that there was some sort of massive, coordinated effort to steal an election. Such a conspiracy would have had to cross state lines, involve hundreds or thousands of people and trickle down from the heights of power to the lowest precinct worker.

...Well, no. That's not actually the case at all. It would take a relatively small number of people to secretly flip the vote only in the states where it was needed, and even in only the counties were such manipulation of the vote would be less likely to be noticed (say, in Democratic Counties...where there was indeed much unexplained funny business, to say the least, last November).

Let's focus, however, on the good news, as we're wont to do. Neal starts the column thusly...

Sorry, cats. It's been that sort of a day (or two, or three). Open Thread to your hearts content! I'll be back as soon as I can...Just in time to leave entirely for a bunch o' days in a row. More on that soon.

The Freedom of Information Requests from the Secret Service have come in. And whoops...look what RAW found!

Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, and previously worked as a male escort.

Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

Guckert made more than three dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force OneŚwhich raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House.

On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.

In March, 2003, Guckert left the White House twice on days he had never checked in with the Secret Service. Over the next 22 months, Guckert failed to check out with the Service on thirteen days. On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one. On one of these days, no briefing was held.

And then there's this...

Others who have covered the White House say not checking in or out with the Secret Service is unusual, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. The Secret Service declined to comment.
...
Guckert declined to comment, directing all questions to the Service.
..
The Service keeps a record of who approved passes only for the last sixty days; previous records are kept by the White House.

Thanks again to Winter Patriot and all of the "6 or 7" BRAD BLOGGERS for your support during last night's BRAD SHOW broadcast! Can't wait until this thing gets easier! As mentioned, this radio game is no easy feat for a novice, especially suddenly, out of the blue and from the road! We look forward to getting back to a homebase where we can really start cooking and kicking some hard ass! (And getting rid of that annoying buzz!)

As well, literally moments before last night's show I received some sad news that a good friend of mine (and a fine BRAD BLOG supporter!) had died suddenly. Didn't help this beginner to get through the first hour or two of the show without being a bit shaky. But having heard at least the last couple of hours of the rebroadcast today (to be available via BRAD SHOW archives shortly!) I think we did okay. Last night's show goes out to my dear, departed friend Aldrich Allen. Godspeed, friend...You are missed.

As mentioned on the air, we've got to get largely off the grid this coming week for some long-planned obligations that will take us to yet another state. If we can get on the air from yet another new location, we will. Otherwise, a rebroadcast or some other devious plan will occcur for this coming Saturday's show.

Either way, we could probably use a few hours sleep, or a day or two or three or four of brain rest. It's been a tough week, month, several months and we better take care of ourselves or we won't be able to continue kicking badguy ass and taking names...And there's plenty more of that to do in the weeks and months ahead. Thanks in advance for your understanding and --- as always-- for your extraordinary support.